Bug 272768

Summary:	Ability to MOVE windows between activities
Product:	[Unmaintained] plasma4	Reporter:	Michael Reiher <redm>
Component:	activities	Assignee:	Ivan Čukić <ivan.cukic>
Status:	RESOLVED UNMAINTAINED
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	absolutelynospam, brian, chanika, craig.magina, david.alston, diego.viola, enno.nagel, greenrd, johann.hoechtl, list-ener, mail, Marcin.Kasperski, mschoell, przemub, secretcode343, silver.salonen, toddrme2178, zilla
Priority:	NOR
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Ubuntu
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Michael Reiher 2011-05-08 13:08:18 UTC

Version:           unspecified (using KDE 4.6.2) 
OS:                Linux

I would like to be able to _move_ windows between activities. At the moment you can only add a new activity the window is shown on or remove one. For a move currently you have to first add the target activity and then remove the original. Which meas you have to go two times through the clumsy titlebar context menu (esp. with touchpads I find this to be a pain). And particularly when you need to move 5, 10, 15.. windows this becomes pretty tedious and annoying.

There are three use cases I came across where I had to move a bunch of windows at a time, plus single windows every now and then.

1) You initially start using activities. Your windows are all on the first activity and now you need to distribute them to the newly create ones.
2) You reorganize activities, e.g. when you find you could use an additional activity.
3) An app with multiple main windows doesn't behave well. E.g. I had rekonq crashing on me quite frequently recently. And each time you restore it all the browser windows are distributed quite randomly across activities and desktops and I have to clean up the mess. Same goes for regular session restoration. Of course ideally the apps themselves should be fixed here, but I'd rather not have to wait until all apps are fixed. Leave alone apps which have no knowledge about activities at all.

Reproducible: Didn't try

Comment 1 Will Stephenson 2011-10-10 20:37:43 UTC

*** Bug 274206 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 2 Gregor Tätzner 2011-12-03 12:23:40 UTC

*** Bug 285626 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 3 Gregor Tätzner 2011-12-03 12:32:33 UTC

*** Bug 268150 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 4 Todd 2011-12-03 12:41:24 UTC

One easy way to do this would be to allow dragging tasks from the task manager to activities in the activity widgets, like they can be with virtual desktops in the pager now.

Comment 5 Craig Magina 2012-01-12 19:10:20 UTC

I'd like to confirm this usability issue. I experience it every time I start firefox as the system never picks the correct windows for each activity requiring me to shuffle them around afterwards, which is rather painful via the current method.

Comment 6 Joe. 2012-02-28 14:56:16 UTC

I too would like to confirm this usability issue - and I would like to see some opinion on it from the developers please?

Comment 7 Diego Viola 2012-08-08 04:16:21 UTC

This would be very nice, having to close a program to start in another activity isn't efficient.

Being ablet o move windows around activities would be really nice.

Comment 8 Diego Viola 2012-08-08 04:16:48 UTC

(In reply to comment #7)
> This would be very nice, having to close a program to start in another
> activity isn't efficient.
> 
> Being ablet o move windows around activities would be really nice.

Being able to*

Sorry typo.

Comment 9 Diego Viola 2012-08-08 04:18:09 UTC

(In reply to comment #8)
> (In reply to comment #7)
> > This would be very nice, having to close a program to start in another
> > activity isn't efficient.
> > 
> > Being ablet o move windows around activities would be really nice.
> 
> Being able to*
> 
> Sorry typo.

BTW, at the time I'm writing this, I'm on archlinux x86_64, KDE 4.9.0.

Comment 10 Brian DeRocher 2012-09-08 02:05:05 UTC

I would love to see this.  I'm adding 20 votes.

Comment 11 David Alston 2013-12-11 14:53:35 UTC

I'd also love to see this feature implemented.

Perhaps it could be incorporated into the "Activities" list that comes up when Meta-q is pressed?  Dragging a window onto the activity name/icon would move that window to that activity.

Comment 12 enno 2015-01-05 21:54:57 UTC

I was suprised there is a keyboard shortcut for moving to a virtual desktop but none for moving to another activtiy. So virtual desktops are still precedent?

Comment 13 Marcin Kasperski 2015-06-26 08:17:43 UTC

I would be very grateful for any idea of how to map keyboard shortcut to „move window to specific activity” action. I managed to script around jumping between activities (by keybinding dbus call to SetCurrentActivity on /ActivityManager/Activities), but I can't find a method to manage activity of specific window.  Looks like the only way is to right-click mouse on titlebar and clickety-manage activities, major PITA for someone working mostly without mouse…

Comment 14 Nate Graham 2018-06-08 20:08:25 UTC

Hello!

This feature request was filed for KDE Plasma 4, which reached end-of-support status in August 2015. KDE Plasma 5's desktop shell has been almost completely rewritten for better performance and usability, so it is likely that this feature request is already implemented in Plasma 5, or is no longer applicable.

Accordingly, we hope you understand why we must close this feature request. If the requested feature is still desired but not implemented in KDE Plasma 5.12 or later, please feel free to open a new ticket in the "plasmashell" product after reading https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved/Bug_Reporting

If you would like to get involved in KDE's bug triaging effort so that future mass bug closes like this are less likely, please read https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved#Bug_Triaging

Thanks for your understanding!

Nate Graham